World reacts with ‘surprising speed’ to Nigerian abduction – one month later

With the coiled energy of a tortoise on Prozac, the international community has sprung to the aid of the frantic families of over 200 missing Nigerian schoolgirls. As most crime-fighting agencies will attest, the most auspicious moment to investigate a kidnapping is at least a month after the event. Like a good wine, a banker’s pension scheme or the humour of James Corden – hostages improve with time.

It is a well-established fact that evidence, witness reports and genital rashes are all best ignored. A spokesman for the White House said: ‘It doesn’t pay to rush these things. These kids could just have been skipping class. A month is no time at all. After all, it took the US two years to join in WW2 and nobody noticed. What’s the hurry?’

The latest kidnappings in the village of Warabe, in north-eastern Nigeria, have generated the same urgency displayed by a three-toed sloth wading through treacle. The Obama administration has sent combination of military, law enforcement and fleet of high-speed tractors to deal with the incident. Meanwhile the British Foreign Office has placed the kidnapped schoolgirls on their list of priorities, just below climate change, prosecuting tax evaders and finding Madeleine McCann.

Each kidnapping has involved gunmen seizing animals, food and then lounging around for a fortnight ‘before anyone notices’. One Black-Ops agent explained: ‘We prefer a softly, softly approach. We like to call it “the Savile technique” – we carefully ignore all pleas for help, evidence of wrong doing or creepy looking haircuts, then at the last moment we wait, and then wait some more, for the target to die of natural causes…and then we strike!’ He added: ‘We’ll get round to this as soon as we’ve found the Lindbergh kid’.